Biodiversity, biogeography and nature conservation in Wallacea and New Guinea /

Abstract

Surveys of snails from New Guinea and surrounding islands provide new distributional and ecological data for Truncatellidae from the Papuan Region. We present an annotated checklist of all Papuan Truncatellidae and the first identification key for the terrestrial genus Taheitia H. and A. Adams, 1863. Unlike widespread marine and estuarine species of Truncatella, the Papuan Taheitia usually have single island ranges and are restricted to forested limestone habitats. New anatomical data suggests that many earlier reports of Taheitia with multi-island distributions appear to be the result of confusion between superficially similar species. Eight new Taheitia species are described: T. biaka sp. nov. from Biak, T. bifurca sp. nov. from Manus, T. gebeensis sp. nov. from Gebe, T. gigantea sp. nov. from Waigeo, T. jodiae sp. nov. from New Britain, T. longpela sp. nov. from New Britain, T. malagan sp. nov. from New Ireland, and T. telnovi sp. nov. from Misool.